Looking ahead towards the upcoming flea season makes me start to have phantom itching episodes. Spring, Summer and Fall are ripe with enemy troops. To successfully win the war, you must start planning now. You don’t want to have to resort to using toxic pesticide pills and spot treatments. Yuck. Garlic as a chemical weapon. […]

Julie Berbiglia takes us to the rooftop of the McKendree United Methodist Church that hosts a community garden featuring deep raised beds, large planters and rain barrels. It also functions as the play area for the day-care kids, who really enjoy it, as you can see in the video. And part of the food grown is even used for the homeless.
Quite a great project worth watching.

ulie Berbiglia is another local light in Nashville’s greening movement. A certified master gardener and the host of Volunteer Gardener on NPT-Channel 8, Berbiglia has been the organic coordinator of Scarritt-Bennett Center’s demonstration garden for six years. She has been involved in advocacy all of her professional life, initially as an administrative assistant for the ACLU.

“You’re working on the big causes,” Berbiglia says. “But you see systems change so slowly. So when I got to the point where I thought, ‘Things are so bad. There’s got to be another way to save the world,’ I already had an interest in gardening, and I found my way over to Scarritt. It was a perfect fit.”

Biochemistry by jeffpoppen, barefootfarmer.org I recently attended an advanced course in biochemistry. You may not want to read any further. On the other hand, if everything in the world can be reduced to a few unreducible elements, let’s try to learn a little about them. N, P, and K are the primary elements farmers fertilize […]

We are exposing our bodies to harmful toxins on a regular basis with the use of plastic bottles. Spread the culture of reusable/refillable containers, starting with water bottles. Reusable water bottles save money, protect health from plastic toxins and reduce environmental pollution. ecogal promotes the participation of individuals, local authorities, companies, non-profit organizations and associations […]

In this truly entertaining video, you’ll follow Jamie teaching a class of young students about industrial processed food: chicken nuggets and then how easy and cheaper ii is to cook them for a lesser price, in less time than what it would take to heat frozen nuggets.

And he actually has them taste both results, to better be able to compare. Truly an aha moment.

Look at the faces, and at how easy a full and satisfying meal is to make, even for first timers, enjoy!

A colourful vegan curry, rich, wholesome and full of tasty goodness, this is an easy and healthy dish.

Free-runner extraordinaire Tim Shieff shares his favourite curry recipe based on traditional Indian spices, whole roasted butternut squash, chickpeas and spinach served on a bed of tumeric infused rice. If you’ve never tried a vegan curry before this is the one to make.

Find the complete recipe with ingredients and instructions at JamieOliver.com

My special optional tips for the more adventurous:

Since I do not use canned beans ever, instead I soak them and sometimes even sprout them.

SOAKING:

Place the chickpeas in a large bowl and cover with cold water. The chickpeas will expand to over double their size, so make sure you cover by several inches of water to allow for expansion. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and let them soak overnight. Drain the water and rinse the beans before cooking The soaking enhances the nutritional value of beans, as well as makes them more digestible.

You can also just immediately start cooking the chickpeas in boiling water while you prepare the rest of the recipe, adding them later on as instructed. This way they will cook longer than the canned equivalent and be fine. Timing: between 45 to 60 minutes, check them: if they are tender and soft inside, that’s it.

YOU CAN ALSO SOAK THE RICE

I usually eat whole, organic rice and the cooking time for that is quite long, 45 minutes. But if I soak the rice the cooking time is much less AND the nutrition values are increased.

Here is a great TED Talk we like to share. As he says in the video: “A survivor sees the problem, and does not go ‘whatever'”. A really good way to look at this!

Enjoy:

2041 will be a pivotal year for our planet. That year will mark the end of a 50-year agreement to keep Antarctica, the Earth’s last pristine continent, free of exploitation. Explorer Robert Swan — the first person to walk both the North and South Poles — is on a mission to ensure that we extend that treaty. With passion and vigor, he pleads with us to choose the preservation of the Antarctic for our own survival.

Robert Swan has explored both poles, and wants to make sure that Antarctica, the world’s last great wilderness, is never exploited.